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"In my first trimester, I complained because I was too sleepy (no sickness though!), in my second trimester I was not sleepy enough, and in my third I was too big to do ANYTHING! I was very dissatisfied with the experience, which I guess set the precedence for what was to come," Glaesmann recalls with hindsight.
When her daughter was born healthy after just eight hours of labor, the new mother was elated -- for about five hours.
Soon she started to feel like she was crumbling inside, while she tried to maintain a cheery disposition for all of her hospital visitors. The nurses told her to expect crying jags, the "baby blues," but no one prepared her for what happened next.
"It was like there was a well inside me that was steadily being fed from a previously untapped, and unlimited, source," she remembers now. Sleeping barely five hours in the two days following delivery, Glaesmann returned home to the assistance of her mother and husband.
Even though she was "delirious with exhaustion," she could not sleep without assistance of medication from a previous bout of insomnia, but even then, her sleep would not last. She awoke in a panic, fearful about not being able to care for her long-awaited child.
As is often the case, in a few days Glaesmann's mother returned to her home and her husband to work. Although she felt competent in basic babycare, her lack of emotions scared her.
"I soon found that I was taking care of her like a robot: feed, burp, change, repeat. While she was sleeping, I would sit on the couch unable to do anything but sit in a pool of anxiety that was filling up faster and faster," Gaesmann recalls. By the time her daughter was four weeks old, she felt unable to perform daily tasks like cleaning house or cooking dinner.
© Tracy Morris
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